The girl moved as if being pulled by a puppeteer's strings. Her normally wide silver-blue eyes were shut to the perils of the world. Her long, flowing dress dragged on the hard, muddy ground and she turned her head to the sky, even if she couldn't see the moonlit stars above her.
Bare feet, bare hands. All felt the mud and the rough bark around her in turn. Her long hair flowed down to her lower back, and it was tangled with leaves, branches and a whole manner of nature.
To anyone walking by, they would have seen a lone female, swaying in the night, looking as if she had been taken over by something not of this world. In a sense, she had been: her body took on its own movements without her commandeering them, and she was so relaxed it was simply luck she had remained standing. She stumbled around on occasions and looked as if she were floating the next.
There was no music, but her body seemed perfectly in time to whatever it was she was hearing. Singular animals appeared around the corners of her little clearing in the woods, and disappeared as if they had been stung. It was no place for them to be. They knew. They listened to the forces of nature and stayed away, lest they find out what would happen to them if they didn't.
The girl danced for almost an infinite amount of time. When she opened her eyes and ceased her wind-pushed movements, it seemed to her as if no time had passed at all. She looked up at the stars, noted they had moved a little in the sky.
Her face was dark, but behind her enormously wide irises was a light, as a fire had hastily been lit and someone was blowing gently on it to keep the flames going. She bowed to someone in the undergrowth – or perhaps there was no one there at all. She dropped to her knees, whispered a prayer to a talisman she clasped her hands.
In a dreamlike state, she walked to the edge of the clearing. Animals rustled in the bushes and her feet began to make footprints on freshly-falling snow. She did not fear the creatures, even though plenty of them could easily kill her. She did not feel the cold. All she could feel was a sense of serenity. She walked as if she were flying. Perhaps, to a passer-by, it would seem that she was.
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To Warm Frozen Fingers // A Short Story Collection
Short StoryI like to write. As you may be able to tell. I haven't been very good at writing lately. As you may also have been able to tell. That's why I've decided to write a short story collection. The stories won't interlink, some may vary wildly and you mig...
